Friday, 25 March 2016

Tutorial Easter Eggshell Mosaic part 2

Now onto part two of our egg shell mosaic. You can read about part 1 here.

Materials:

boiled egg

clay

roller or pasta machine

blade or x-acto

clay tools

acrylic paint

wire

pliers

eggshells

liquid clay or glue

(gold marker)

varnish

Instructions:

Tutorial Easter Eggshell Mosaic part 2

First boil your egg for about 10 minutes to harden it.

If you're using air-dry clay you could also use a plastic egg or if you can get your hands on it, a wooden egg.

However, I wanted to try it with a real one.

Roll out a sheet of clay as evenly as possible. Cut one side straight and start wrapping your egg, cut off the excess clay and smooth the ends together.

Then pinch the clay together at the top and bottom like on the photo. Your egg should sit nice and tight in there.

Cut away the excess clay. This works nicely with scissors, too. Then smooth out all the seams.

Cut around the middle of the egg as straight as possible. make a light indent first, so that you can correct the line if it's not straight all the way around. Then cut deeper and smooth out any irregularities.

Bake or let dry depending on your clay.
Then remove your creation from the real egg. With polymer clay, you can use a blade to carefully part both. With air-dry clay you should do it before it has fully dried. Carefully twist and turn the egg to remove it and then pull.

Here is how I made the hinge. The upper piece is one wire loop with two side pieces and the other has two loops and two side pieces. Make sure that there's enough space between the loops so that the upper part fits into it.

Glue the hinges on your egg, making sure that the loops hang a bit over the edge and that the upper one fits into the lower one.

Try if it works by feeding a head pin through all three loops before the glue is completely dry.

You can also use liquid clay and bake it again.

I painted mine black to fit my pendant.

This time I decided to draw on my design by hand instead of using a template. But you can do it however you like.

Then start gluing on your eggshells. Put the glue on one area at a time and then place down the little egg pieces.

I used a super glue that doesn't dry instantly, so I had a couple of seconds to move everything around.

Here my next layer of eggshells.

On the upper half I decided to have some flowers. Here you can see how I made them.

I also added three small balls of clay as feet and a flower on top, which I decided to omit later.

I also painted the borders of the egg gold with a marker.

Finally glaze your whole piece to protect the eggshells.

Put a head pin through the hinge and then you can use your egg as decoration or to store pretty stuff inside.

Here some pictures of my finished project :)

Tutorial Easter Eggshell Mosaic part 2

Tutorial Easter Eggshell Mosaic part 2

And that's it. Do you like it? Let me know :) Send me pictures if you recreate this :)